Cougar walking on an upper arm

There was a girl called Tamsin Okoro-Reyes who kept goats above the drowned village of Clent Wharf, where the old sea wall had given up in the time of the great rains. She had one dog, a lame thing named Biscuit, and a rule her father gave her: never turn your back on high ground. So when the big tawny shape stepped out from the broken chapel roof one grey morning, she did not turn. She lifted the lamp off its hook and held it high, the way you hold a candle to a saint.

The cat came on slowly across the mud. Its head was level and its eyes were the colour of old brass, and it looked at her as if she were the one who had wandered into its country. Biscuit flattened herself in the straw. Tamsin said nothing, because her father had also said that a silent person is a hard meal to swallow.

The cougar stopped at the threshold of the pen and sat, very neatly, the way a lady sits in a parlour. Then it yawned, showing a pink tongue and a row of teeth that did not care about anyone's opinion, and got up and walked back into the reeds. Tamsin set the lamp down. Her hands were shaking so hard the flame guttered.

The goats were all counted that evening, and all were there. She still tells people the cat was only passing through, that it had business somewhere else, and that it chose her herd out of courtesy. I have never known her to admit she was afraid. But she keeps the lamp on its hook now, lit, and she never once turns her back on the hill.